In 2019, Hollis McLaughlin (left) took a photo with barber Norman Millette in an elderly barber shop on Congress Street. Photo/John Duncan

Hollis McLaughlin Jr. (Hollis McLaughlin Jr.) is the general consensus of downtown residents. He is the most diligent person in Portland. He was proud of this title for five years until he was awarded the title in February last year. Died prematurely (possibly due to COVID-19) at the age of 63.  

"He has always been a liar," said John Napolitano, whose grandmother was a friend and neighbor of Hollis' stepmother Kay McLaughlin, who lived on South Street near Portland Gorham Point ( The most famous today is the statue of Director John Ford, which overlooks the intersection). "From a young age," his obituary wrote, "Hollis shoveled snow [and] as a shoe-shining boy." Napolitano recalled that Hollis could almost accept what his neighbors provided in the 1960s. Any odd jobs. 

In the early 1970s, Hollis started washing dishes and setting tables at Ye Olde Pancake Shoppe, a Congress Street restaurant run by the DiPhilippo family. He has worked there almost every day for nearly 25 years. In 1997, Carrie L. Robbins, a student of the Salt Industry Documentary Institute, sat at a table. Suddenly, she wrote her salt work: "A fleshy piece appeared in front of me. , Curved waiter's arm."  

"I squeezed his arm," Robbins wrote. "He showed a toothy, dimpled smile, and exclaimed,'There is no fat here! I exercise at my brother's house.'"  

"There was lightning, and then there was Hollis McLaughlin," Robbins wrote. His colleague gave him a nickname: the machine. Hollis" walked quickly to a nearby table and swept the rest of the food into the bucket. He looked at me every few seconds to make sure I was watching him because he wiped the table with a damp cloth, violently Tap rolled silverware and laminated menus.

"Hollis stepped back," Robbins continued, "Raise your hands, looking forward to my approval.'Look? All done! They tried, but they could never catch me. Someone came in yesterday and he said if I Don’t slow down, I’ll get a speeding ticket!’” 

Hollis told Robbins that he likes his job. "I know everyone, too," he added. Hollis "calls everyone by name and remembers every detail of [their] lives," she observed.  

Hollis’ friends interviewed for this story also marveled at his encyclopedic memory and love of labor. But someone who knows him better than most people, the source we call T., also commented that Hollis sometimes lied. 

"What are you doing on Thanksgiving, Hollis?" T. would ask. 

"My mom baked 52 pies!" Hollis might brag, or, "There will be so many people, we must have two seats!" 

Most of Hollis' acquaintances (including this reporter) on the sidewalk and at the lunch counter were lying. But if, like T., you know him long enough and ask the same questions year after year, then you will find that something is wrong. For example, you realize that Hollis did not buy a "Hoovah" vacuum cleaner for his stepmother on Mother's Day because he said the same thing last year and the previous Mother's Day. 

In fact, Hollis spent Thanksgiving at the Portland Club, a private social club on State Street that opened its doors to the poor and homeless for holiday meals. According to T.-a sibling of Hollis and Hollis himself told this-Hollis suffered brutal physical abuse and neglect during the childhood of his father, elder Hollis and stepmother . Despite his diligence, it turns out that there is another reason Hollis seizes any chance of not being at home.

"Hollis endured something like a house of horror," T. continued, noting that children like Hollis would now be considered. "He is like a lashing stake-locked in a closet and tied to the bed. If he wets the bed, he must sleep on the floor in the closet. This guy is like a complete crush.... Hollis IV When they are 10 years old, they will be thrown on the wall opposite the room." 

This brings us to the subject of this story. Hollis McLaughlin Jr. is the most diligent man in town. He has been ruthlessly exploited by Geoffrey I. Rice for decades. He has long been widely regarded by downtown residents as Portland's most ruthless slum owner. He is also the largest slum owner in Maine's largest city, and he controls more commercial and residential buildings than any other individual owner. 

Rice and his men worked for Hollis like a dog, forcing him to clean up Rice's property in exchange for the "rent" of the Trelawney Building next to the Joe Tobacco Shop in the city center. But the room Rice "rented" to Hollis for 23 years is not even suitable for keeping a dog. It has no electricity, no bathroom, no kitchen, no running water, and Hollis may not be able to control its temperature because most of the windows in the old building were not opened, and the tenants did crack the windows during the "heating" period. The Trelawney lease stipulates that the lease is defined as the "season" between September 15 and May 15. If their window is opened "more than three (3) minutes", they will face a fine after five days' notice And expelled.     

About seven years ago, when Rice expelled Hollis within a short period of time, it was further discovered that he did not track Hollis' working hours. The inhabitable room Hollis lived in was basically worthless as a housing unit, so all the labor Hollis did for its rental value was actually stolen by Rice. Based on his lease at Trelawney, Hollis may have been defrauded of at least $500,000 in salary.        

This story is about Rice on the surface, but he is not important. Rice, now in her 80s, is a cowardly, mean, and greedy parasite, and a person who doesn't deserve Hollis' shoeshine. The important thing is that thousands of laborers, like Hollis, have been exploited by Rice for more than half a century, simply because they need an affordable place to live or do business. 

You will not find many of the "important" government officials cited here (for example, city councilors, city managers, fire chiefs). Their decades of silence and inaction Rice made his property-some of which have historical significance-to fall apart under obvious circumstances. The lawyers at Portland City Hall certainly knew that Rice was a deep-rooted contempt. Since 1981, the city has placed more than 320 liens on Rice properties, apparently because of the delay in the payment of property taxes year after year.  

Although Portland officials promised to improve security inspections after the 2014 Noyce Street apartment fire that killed six people, Rice's dangerously neglected property is still largely ignored. The tenant told Mainer that the windows and large bricks fell on the sidewalk outside the eight-story Trelawney building, the smoke alarm did not work, the fire escape had nowhere to go, the outdated electrical system operated by the jury, etc. Wait. It seemed that sheer luck prevented one of Rice’s garbage dumps from becoming the next fatal tragedy.      

Rice’s tenants have now taken matters into their own hands. Faced with rent increases and evictions during the pandemic last year, a group of renters active in the local progressive movement formed the Trelawney Tenants Alliance to counter Rice and push city officials to perform their duties. They have already had some small victories. .  

A few years ago, when Rice was able to settle Hollis’ wage theft and eviction case for about $5,000, Rice may have felt relieved—Hollis may have squandered a small accident on the scratch ticket. Dreaming of winning the kind of amount he didn't know, he had already made it. Unlike other notorious Portland landowners—such as Joe Solley, whose old port assets dwarf Rice’s empire—Rice maintains an extremely low-key posture and manages to stay out of the news. 

The Rape Cave in the Schwartz Building in the heart of the Portland Arts District. Photo/Chris Busby

Let's take a quick look at Jeffrey Rice's kingdom, starting with the most obvious example of his serious negligence as the owner and neighbor: the Schwartz Building (600-604 Parliament Street).  

The Schwartz Building was built in 1920 and is located at one of the most trafficked intersections in the state. The High Street meets Congress in the heart of the Portland Arts District. It is located across from Capitol Square Park, the Portland Museum of Art and the National Theater.     

We wrote "That's my dump! A feature running in The Bollard in 2012 and 2017. The Portland News Herald also reported on this. Portland Economic Development Director Greg Mitchell Assure the newspaper that the renovation of the building "is still going on, although the exterior is still going on" in response to growing concerns that this is a disaster that harms the tourism industry. "Some of these things just take time. ...I am very confident that we will get there. " 

It was in June 2011...At that time, the Schwartz Building was still vacant, posing a clear threat to public safety. The most worrying thing is that its huge red brick clock tower is obviously tilted and is expected to collapse. In 2012, project architect Jim Sterling told us jokingly: "If the tower collapses, it might fall to the parking lot", behind the TV station WCSH next door, "so there is nothing to be afraid of."     

Or check out the photo on the cover of this monthly issue taken last month, which shows a recessed entrance to the Schwartz Building. Urban planners warn against creating or allowing such spaces in cities, as they encourage vandalism, public urination and defecation, public sex, and drug use (neighbors say all of these happen there with a certain frequency), and for more Serious crimes provide ready cover, such as assault and rape.  

The city has taken some measures to improve the appearance of the property. Ten years ago, as part of Portland's exterior wall improvement plan, it provided Rice with $11,000. The multimillionaire’s initial response was to replace the large glass windows on the ground floor with plywood, which soon became a messy public billboard full of graffiti and flyers. At the time, Sterling and Rice’s lawyer Paul Burger stated that work on the project was delayed because Rice was seeking more public funding in the form of a federal historical preservation tax credit.

The plywood has been removed, and for many years, to this day, people have been seeing small workers doing something inside. But no matter what they are doing, they have not yet formed a single rental housing or retail space. In what local politicians have long referred to as the "housing crisis", as homeless people are frozen to death within walking distance every winter, this building with 20 studio apartments more than ten years ago was only for Occasionally shanty towns provide shelter. The back alley or the rape cave mentioned earlier. 

According to the city’s latest property valuation, the Schwartz Building is worth more than $2.9 million. It shines in the adjacent space at 606 Congress Street, and the Downtown Lounge occupies this small area of ​​Rice with a total value of more than 3.5 million U.S. dollars. 

Rice's other assets in the 600 block of Congress include the three-story commercial building of the 612-620 Capitol (the original coffee design house), which is valued at $2.2 million in the city. The tax value of the retail space (currently occupied by Kushiya Benkay Restaurant) on 653 of the Capitol is USD 437,500. The 124-unit Trelawney Building next door is worth nearly 16 million U.S. dollars, and the 656-58 Capitol (The Merchant Company, Mainely Noods, 19 apartments) across the street is worth more than 2.1 million U.S. dollars. Finally, there is 684 Congress St. (Allen & Walker Antiques, a new weed shop, 10 apartments), valued at $1.6 million. 

Now let us turn to State Street. Rice owns six apartment buildings (approximately 80 units in total) and a four-family house in State, with a total estimated value of more than $14 million. (It is worth noting here that in such a hot market, the value of the property assessed for tax purposes is much lower than their actual selling price.) The property located at the corner of State and Pine Street is the location of the famous property. Blackstones is the oldest gay bar still open in town. A porn store called Treasure Chest next to Blackstones has also been a tenant of Rice for decades. 

On High Street, Rice has a nine-unit apartment building valued at approximately US$1.3 million. His assets on Cumberland Avenue are concentrated in the west end: three apartment buildings (one with 27 units) worth nearly 6 million U.S. dollars, and single-family homes worth more than 600,000 U.S. dollars. Going further inside, we found a 6-unit on Sherman Street and Grant has a 7-unit, both of which are worth nearly one million dollars. 

Rice's two apartment buildings on Brackett Street in Portland's West End consist of 13 units with a total value of approximately US$2 million. Not far away, on Danfoss Street, Rice owns three adjacent buildings with a total value of nearly US$3 million. The most valuable of these (at least for tax officials) is the four units located at 126-28 Danforth. This million-dollar property is only a few steps away from the Victoria Building and seems to have been vacant for many years. There is a graffiti tag on one of the front doors. Building materials and debris can be seen through the windows, but there is no indication that this is an active construction site. 

The million-dollar garbage dump at 126-28 Danfoss Street, Portland. Photo/Chris Busby

In the Dearing Center off the peninsula, Rice owns the building at the corner of Stevens and Pleasant Avenues. It was previously occupied by Jet Video and is now home to the Rwanda Bean Coffee Shop, other commercial tenants, and six second floors. The occupants of the apartment ($1.5 million). In Woodfords Corner, he owns the corner building where The Bayou Kitchen and State of Mind Design are located, which also has two apartments ($1 million). At Cape Morrill, further down Forest Avenue, he owns Susan fish and chips and a cinder block building ($670,000) operated by an auto repair shop. 

Anything else? Oh, and 9 units on Highland Avenue are worth 1.5 million dollars, two units on Deering Ave. are worth 5 million dollars, and there are some parking lots in the city center. The total value of the city is about 245,000 dollars. Rice also owns two fairly large properties in Biddeford: a 10-unit apartment building ($480,000) at 225 Alfred St., and the Strip Shopping Center near the intersection of Highways 1 and 111, where CVS and Aaron's properties are located. Lease first and then use the location for other businesses (US$2.3 million). 

In total, these properties constitute a portfolio worth nearly 63 million U.S. dollars, including nearly 375 housing units. From the street, most of the buildings are in good condition. Almost anyone can use paint work and/or masonry work, and landscaping is usually dim, although tenants of certain properties, such as the three-unit house at 291 Brackett, seem to have done their own work to decorate the place. On the street at 235 Brackett Street, the yard was overgrown with weeds last month. A broken car was parked in the gravel parking lot behind. The violations issued by the big city for failing to clear the snow on the sidewalk were still sticky. On the front door.                      

Jeffrey Rice did not establish or earn his real estate wealth; he inherited it from his parents Rebecca and Harry Rice, who owned and operated Rice's Baking Co. in Portland for more than half a century and were in the city When real estate is relatively cheap, they use their profits to buy back real estate. The retail and wholesale baking business was originally located in the ancient Italian and Jewish communities at the foot of Munjoy Hill, and later moved to the Forest Ave. location because Susan's Fish & Chips occupied it. A source recalled that they bought bagels at the Rice Bakery in the old neighborhood, and then crossed the road to buy cream cheese at a market owned by Rebecca Rice’s parents, Russian immigrants Charles and Lena Sevi.   

A source who was close to Rice, we call it S., said that the young Jeffrey "has no childhood at all" and was forced to work in his parents' bakery when other children went out to play. . Rebecca Rice's obituary tells of this obsession with hard work. "Her days usually start at 3 in the morning and end at 7:30 in the evening," it read. "She only spares time to participate in religious festivals, enjoy the rare (voluntary) vacation, and always looks forward to returning to work."

Jonathan St. Laurent has run his Uncle Billy's Barbeque restaurant in several locations over the years-the last one was one of Geoffrey Rice's properties on Congress Street-he said he got a job at Rices Bakery on Forest Avenue . He persisted for a day. 

“She worked for me like a rented mule,” Saint Laurent said of Rebecca Rice, who died in 2010 at the age of 95 (Harry Rice died in 1967). He said that the bakery was filled with "old-fashioned long wooden tables" on which the dough was processed. At the end of the shift, St. Laurent is responsible for cleaning the table. He asked Mrs. Rice if there was soap that would make this task easier. "No," she replied, according to St. Laurent, "soap is too expensive. Just use water." 

In the years after the bakery closed, Rebecca Rice worked in a leased office to help manage the family's empire. Sources said she was strong but kind. For example, some people say that she gives Hollis a Christmas bonus every year: a 20-dollar bill. An insider revealed that when she talks about a tenant trying to renew her lease, she usually tells the office manager, "See if you can make an extra $5." "But Jeff will say,'See if you can make an extra two hundred dollars.'"

Geoffrey I. Rice, in a recent Facebook photo. Screenshot/Chris Busby

This is a good place to explain why Mainer allows certain sources to be anonymous. Some people spoke as whistleblowers, accusing them of violating housing and labor laws, as well as tax evasion and other related crimes (for example, if Hollis works off-book, his compensation is not taxed, and the value of his work is in Rice’s classification The whereabouts in the account is unknown). 

Current tenants’ sources worry that their rents may rise, otherwise they will be evicted if they speak out. According to S., their concerns are justified. "More than once...someone would walk into the office and say,'Oh my God, I have been trying to solve this problem for a week, two weeks, a month' or whatever, [office staff] would say,' Well, we'll take care of it. As soon as they leave, [the staff] will say either "raise the rent" or they sometimes evict people for almost no reason, just resenting them because you ask too much. 

"All the tenants there, they know who they are dealing with," S. added, "but they will walk into the office and kiss their ass because they know what the consequences might be."

More than one source cited the fact that it is well known that Geoffrey Rice used the power of employment to evict tenants and deal with other "problems" related to his business and family. "I don't want bricks to pass through my window," a source commented. 

Three years ago, The Bollard introduced one of the heavyweights: Danny (aka Frankie) Fournier [see "The Enforcer", January 2018]. Fornier was described by law enforcement agencies as a "single crime wave" and a "professional criminal." Many years ago, Rice was hired to work in maintenance and construction work, and later engaged in free lease enforcement for him. 

"He called me," Fournier said of Rice at the end of 2017. "Jeffrey is tight-lipped. When he wants to talk about something, he will say,'Hey, can you see me in the parking lot below? Hey, man, I have some problems with these tenants here, um, me I wonder if you can help me solve this problem. 

"I said,'I see, Jeffrey. Don't worry. Stop talking,'" Fournier continued. "I grew up in an old school, and I was very fucking keen, and I took care of it. I went in, I kicked the fucking door in and stomped their pee. Say,'Get out. Man. , I’m not calling the police to come to you. I’m not alone. I have my Kennedy Park staff” (referring to the housing project in the East Side of Portland). 

Contacted by phone last month, Fournier defended his old boss. "I like Jeff," he said. "Jeff has done a lot of good things." For example, "I saw people living in the Trelawney building for many years without paying rent," said Fournier, who rented the ground floor space himself in the late 2000s. , Used in the gym. 

He also respects Rice's business acumen. Fournier said that Rice once hired one of his girlfriends to clean his house. “My girlfriend cleaned 20 buildings in a week, and her job required 20 different inspections,” Fournier said. "Each building that Jeffrey owns in this city is an independent business.... This is wise, standard business practice." 

Rice's only sibling, Sandra Rice Sternburg, died in 2011 at the age of 75. It is not easy to figure out the ownership history of all these buildings. Rice's personal family members (including Sandra's late husband Harold E. Sternburg), a large number of limited liability companies, and various trusts appear in the county property records. Somewhere buried in these records may be an important clue that can help explain Jeffrey Rice's poor management of these buildings. 

Several sources said that when Jeffrey inherited these properties from his late father, he sold one or two properties at a price his mother thought was too low, prompting her to put the rest of her portfolio in a trust to prevent Jie Freeh sold these properties during his lifetime. Mainer was unable to confirm this at press time, but this arrangement can help explain why Rice does not just honor buildings that he personally does not seem to value.         

Rice and his wife Harriet Rice live in a huge apartment that occupies the first half of the top floor of the Trelawney Building. They have two grown-up children, and they adopted them. A source who has been to the Rice apartment said that it was full of artworks, but there were different opinions on whether the artwork was good or not. The couple often travel to Florida, France (where their daughter lives) and other places, usually for several weeks in a row. They may also hold real estate in other states.

S. said that some of Geoffrey's Rice art collections were taken from tenants who died without surviving relatives. S. further claimed that Rice would take food from the deceased’s apartment and bring it upstairs for his family to eat. S. said that the temperature in the apartment itself is kept at around 60 degrees, so Rice's children have to wear sweaters in it during the colder months. 

If you inquire around the town, it’s easy to get an anecdote of Rice’s extreme frugality: He and his family showed up in restaurants in shabby clothes at night (a source said Rice was dressed like “a porter in the 1950s” ...Can't do it personally like a janitor"); when Jeffrey rushed out of a printing shop, he was angry that he had to pay a few extra cents to get a hand-made copy. 

"Anything that involves money will be counted as a penny," said a former commercial tenant who we will call R. "He has a strong human temperament, they can carry some kind of tension with them, but to me he seems harmless. He is not fair to us, the way we speak to us or the like is not harsh, just our face. In terms of the above babble, he is not a miser. But obviously, he will not do what he doesn't want to do."

"Personally, he is a good person," said Q., a businessman in Portland, who has known Rice for many years. "He knows what's going on nearby, and he has something to say.... Talking to him is fun, because you also know who you are talking to—like, yes, this guy is like a cunning bastard, but he Actually a cool person." 

According to sources, Rice has a law degree and specializes in real estate, but he dislikes confrontation so much that he has no appetite to practice in court. This common observation is supported by many tenants, such as R., who said that when asked questions he didn't want to answer during lease negotiations, Rice would simply ignore it. 

"Geoffrey has a tendency to avoid problems and confrontation," said the tenant we call P.

Rice declined Mena's interview request over the phone last month. "I'm not interested in writing anything about me," he said. 

Frank O'Connor is a real estate agent for The Dunham Group. He has been dealing with Rice's commercial real estate for a long time, but he did not respond to our call for an interview. 

The commercial tenants interviewed for this story all said the same thing about renting a house from Les: space is cheap, but you get what you pay for. In other words, you can get space in old buildings with many problems, most of which need to be solved by yourself. When or if maintenance workers do show up to solve some major problems, they may or may not complete a competent job-but again, some people will complain about their dangers.  

"Now, the fact that I rent a house from a slum owner means that I can actually afford my shop rent," P. said. "Portland's commercial real estate market is very competitive, especially because all the weed dealers have come in, so now I'm a little lucky, I'm dealing with a slum," the man added with a smile.  

Another commercial tenant said that Rice was "just a terrible landlord." "It's really hard to try to get him to do anything, or approve a sign or anything you need as a business. But the rent is the reason you endure it because the rent is pretty reasonable."

That is, until suddenly it is not. Many commercial tenants stated that they signed a triple-net lease with Rice, which makes the tenants, in addition to the usual rent, also responsible for maintenance costs, property taxes and insurance for the part of their building. The tenant said that if Rice consistently applies the lease terms, it will not be a problem in itself. His failure to do so has resulted in unexpected bills requiring thousands of dollars in some years.  

"A few years ago, I received a bill in January or something, this was the worst time of the year, and it cost [several thousand] dollars," one tenant said. "I thought,'I don't have this kind of money. What is this?' So I looked into it... In fact, my lease did say that he could charge triple play fees." In the past few years, this allegation Without being mentioned, Rice "didn't try to collect the payment overdue, so I escaped in a strange way."

Rice allows some tenants to pay the triple net bills in installments. During the pandemic, he also reduced or postponed the rents of some commercial tenants and in some cases wrote off overdue balances. 

Broken masonry on the upper floors of the Congress Street facade of the Trelawney Building. Photo/Chris Busby

It is also important to note that some tenants, residential and commercial, are very happy to rent from Rice (though they still don't want to be quoted). Mainer has spoken to several people who live in some of the better buildings in Rice, and they either have no complaints or only mild criticism. 

For these renters, they are often professionals with a higher income than the Trelawney group, so Rice Property’s problem is more about style than substance. They are annoyed by lease terms, such as the three-minute window rule or banning candles, which imply that they like children. 

Rich tenants, or just bold, can fight back against Rice and his minions, and when they realize that their situation is bad, they can escape. Those who lack the same will inevitably suffer. 

Allison Stevens, the owner of The Thirsty Pig, the Old Port bar and restaurant, moved into an apartment at 684 Congress Street (above Allen & Walker Antiques) in May 2011. She rented a parking space nearby, but when she came home late after working at her bar, the scene of that parking lot was so “rough” that a male employee of a nearby restaurant would escort her off every night Enter her building to ensure her safety.    

"The garbage area is very rough, the whole place is very rough," Stevens said. "There are also serious pest infestations in the bathroom-there are thousands of bugs on the windowsill. I remember I complained too, but I did nothing.... I finally moved because there was no smoke alarm one night It sounded, and I woke up to find a smoke-filled apartment." 

Stevens said that when she called the office the next morning to complain about the smoke alarm and told them she moved out because she was afraid to live there, "They were like,'You can't move out. You can't destroy you. Lease.'" 

"I said,'Any further contact can be through my lawyer,'" Then she broke up and rented a new apartment in the nearby Houwan Tower (which she said was not much better). She said Rice "has no further contact." 

Stevens had just arrived in town at the time, and he obtained a bug-infested death trap in an apartment through Apartment Mart, the rental office on the ground floor of the Trelawney Building, which managed Rice properties, at a cost of about $1,400 per month. Apartment Mart “attracted Portlanders for the first time, just like Back Bay Tower, because their ads are everywhere, they are easy to find on Craigslist, and they will respond to you right away,” she said. Apartment Mart and Back Bay Tower "both are bad experiences, but they have the most, such as Google SEO or other information on how to find an apartment in Portland."

"In this bar, we talk to everyone," Stevens said in an interview in Pig last month. "I have talked to a lot of people who have gone through the exact same scene... they are like,'Oh, Jeffrey Rice? Yes, I know that person too.'"

At the end of the Trelawny Building in the early 1990s, Shawn Seaman was a few steps below Stevens on the economic ladder—he was a worker, not The business owner-but a similar intolerance to nonsense allows him to stand up for himself. The cheap rent meets his basic budget, and Seaman was initially excited about his unit on the fifth floor, where you can see the sunset view of Baishan. 

"The terrible thing is that we had a terrible cockroach problem-cockroaches were rampant at the time," Seaman said. And “never really performed maintenance. I stayed there for 14 years, and when I moved out, I still had the same shabby, green, scattered curtains as when I moved in.”

"Did you let them fix things?" I asked Seaman. 

"Yes," he said. "You just didn't reply. Anyway, it took them a long time to do anything." 

When Seaman got there, Hollis lived in Trelawney, doing his best to keep the place clean. "He was a hardworking man," Seaman recalled. "He has a unique personality and is a bit slow." Seaman said that the building was "a bit dirty." "But he's the only one,"-referring to Hollis-"So you have eight floors of people tracking dirt on the floor or something. If they can keep up with it, it's a great Old building-kind of like a great old slum building."

Seaman also saw cell-like spaces in which tenants like Hollis lived. "They have more rooms than apartments," Seaman said, "because, for example, I have a kitchen; they pipe gas, so I have a gas stove and a refrigerator, etc. These rooms have nothing. They have a bed. It’s like a room in Y, about the same size... but their rent is much cheaper."

Rice does not need a huge deposit. The first month and last month's rent are also an important reason why Hyman finally came to Trelawney. "I think it costs $115 to move in-this is my damage deposit-which is one of the reasons why I stayed there for 14 years," Seaman said. "Everywhere else, when I want to move, it costs like two large and three large damage deposits-four months of rent to move in. I want to move, but it’s cheap enough, I will stay. Because it is not that bad."

Then, in the fall of 1996, when the new boss "Chain Saw" Al Dunlap laid off employees to please investors, Seaman lost his job at Biddeford Textile. Faced with the prospect of needing to participate in the general assistance program to survive, Seaman heads to Rice's office to face the music. 

"I told them in the office,'If I go to GA, will you have a problem because the city government must send an inspector [approval of GA housing]. This place is full of fucking cockroaches. They told me,' Well, instead of that, why don’t you do this job now? Cleaning the apartment. It’s like a minimum wage job. I can understand. 

"They don't want the city government to inspect it and find a cockroach problem," Seaman continued. "They just give me free rent, but I have a list of things I have to do-clean the refrigerator, wipe the walls, sweep the floor, mop the floor, and so on.... This is not unique. Many people do this. of."  

However, Seaman has more skills than most tenants. Considered to be one of the best stage lighting engineers in town, he can also do electrical and refrigeration work, repair boilers, etc. Office workers noticed this and tried to take advantage of it. "I got more and more complex jobs, but the salary I assumed remained at the lowest level," Seaman said. "Six months later, I am repairing the walls, I am doing electrical repairs and other things, and I said,'You know, I really need to make more money because I'm doing skill-level things.' I was told,'We no longer need your services.'"

Seaman pays close attention to his working hours, so he is not deceived in this regard. Uncle Sam and Maine seem to be the ones who have failed in this off-book arrangement. "I would say how many hours I spent on this job, they would use it for rent, so no money changed hands or no checks, nothing," Seaman said.  

As the years passed, Seaman felt more and more the trap and paranoia of living in Trelawney. "It's easy to get in, but they keep raising rents," he said. "They found that you got a better job, and suddenly your rent went up. They didn't want you to save enough money to move out. 

"You learned not to say anything around the guard," Seaman continued. "They do have security on their doors, but they are usually other tenants who live there, so their salary is not high, and you will soon find out that they are rats-you can't tell them anything; it will always Go to the front desk." Seaman said, he said casually to the doorman, and he quickly found a new job with a higher salary, which caused rents to rise. 

"Why did you leave Trelawney?" I asked Seaman. 

"I can't pay the rent and I was evicted," he said. "I work in industry, and as these industries close, it will become harder and harder to find a job." 

But even the expulsion could not completely remove Rice's paw from Seaman's fur because he owed the rent. "My opinion on this is that they still keep [lease back] in their books, as if it were a loan," Seaman told me. "So if I were to move back to one of his properties, I would have to repay this huge sum of money because they were calculating [interest] as a percentage, as if it were a loan." 

It has been fifteen years since Seaman was expelled. I can't believe it and emphasized: "So they still think you owe this rent?" 

"Of course," Seaman said. "You owe them to death, I guess." 

Seaman’s views on Rice are similar to those of downtown business owner Q. "When you meet him and talk to him, he is very pleasant and charming," Seaman said. "Of course, so is Dr. Mengele. He was a ruthless fucking slum owner, and he still is."   

This brings us back to Hollis. 

Hollis had neither the money nor the guts to fight Rice and his minions. It took only a minute for Robbins, a student of Salt, to realize that Hollis was very hardworking and very eager to please-to show someone, anyone that he did a good job. Rice and his employees absolutely knew this and took full advantage of it.   

Hollis respects Rice and even brags about him, his good friend T. said. "You know, he is a real estate lawyer," Hollis would say. "He is not poor. He is not poor."  

"He is very smart, he will never chat like Jeffrey," T. said. "That's why I think Hollis's situation is more like a predatory thing. It's like you have this person, you know he might be intimidated by you, and you know how to pull his strings. 

"It's like, if Hollis is here, how hard would it be for me to let him shovel the sidewalk?" T. continued. "He wants to do it anyway, and I will compensate him, but if you are smart, you can find a way to make him do it for nothing."

Hollis knows what his work rental arrangement with Rice means and does not know what, but it is not his nature to challenge authority. "He is frustrated because his transaction is what he should do for rent, and there are some other things," T. said. "But he doesn't want to annoy anyone."    

"If there is really a storm," T. recalled, "I guess the windows of the Trelawney Building would often fall down, so his task is to clean them up. Someone will wake him up and send him out. Or, If there is something that other people don’t want to clean up — like a resident vomiting in an elevator or something — he will be woken up to do that.”

S., a source who was once close to Rice, provides another example of this abuse. "There were several people who rented an apartment, and Jeff angered them for some reason, maybe expelling them or something," S. said. "So, when they paid the rent...every time they dumped the trash, they would shit on the top of the tank. I looked in the room; I had never seen anything like it. It was like a volcano. They must have a ladder or something to do this, but they must be really angry and Hollis has to clean it up." 

"Maybe Geoffrey doesn't know the [extra work]," T. said risky. "Maybe it just dropped in pecking order... If you know how to press Hollis' button, you can say, "I'm going to tell Geoffrey you didn't do it," or they might say "Jeffrey wants you to do this. "Maybe it didn't come directly from Jeffrey, but it looked like it was running there, something based on fear." 

T. said that Hollis was evicted in 2013 or 2014, and he was only notified to move out about 7 days in advance. He didn't tell anyone until the sixth night. T said: "I think he was tricked into signing a form that basically said he was going to move out." T added. "He didn't realize what he was signing. " 

S. said the same thing and claimed that Rice expelled Hollis to upgrade the room to a real apartment in order to collect real rent. Seaman said that in his last few years there, the conversion of Trelawney's single-room units into full apartments has been an ongoing project. Sure enough, according to internal documents leaked to Mainer, Unit 601 where Hollis lives is now an actual apartment. As of 2018, the rent is $810 per month.

"I know where Hollis lives, but he doesn't like anyone coming to his house," T. said. When T. finally saw his living conditions on the day he moved out, they and another friend who helped Hollis were shocked. "He has always lived like a caveman," T said. "He may have been there for eight or nine years without power." Any lights or electronic devices are battery-powered, just like Hollis used to listen to him. Favorite music, classical piano, and mixing tapes that make the same music for friends are the same. 

The toilet in the hall that Hollis should use has broken down. God knows how many months or years it has been. He will spread newspapers on the floor of his room to handle his business. A painter then found a large jar of urine in the corner. The painter told S. Hollis that his sad mattress was wet with sweat.       

"He was really embarrassed," T. said of Hollis, "because he is the kind of very proud person, people find that he is treated worse than anyone else-for example, he almost I would rather no one find out than Jeffrey to make a bad reputation for himself. Because I think he really respects Jeffrey and I know he has a good relationship with his mother." 

"For someone who has endured so much, how active he is, how much happiness he spreads, someone [will be so bad for him], it's a bit shocking," T. added. "In this case, he may be happily cleaning up other people's mess, and as happy as a clam, there is a place to eat peanut butter cookies at night." 

Another friend of Hollis's, the wealthy man in the West End he had helped in the past, was also shocked by what Rice did. (According to her request, we will not disclose her name.) She took Hollis to Pine Tree Legal Aid, a non-profit organization advocating low-income renters. His case was handled by lawyer Ann Carney. 

Rice’s wage violation for failing to record Hollis’s working hours is “the easiest case to bring,” T. said. Therefore, Carney did not involve Rice in a long and expensive lawsuit, but settled it at a price of about $5-ostensibly because of a violation of the wage standard, "but it actually replaced what happened to him there. Things," T said. 

Carney arranged for Hollis to receive the money in installments, so the full payment would not make Hollis ineligible for government benefits. Before Rice expelled him, he never needed to receive a benefit, but suddenly he was both homeless and unemployed. Hollis obtained a real apartment through Shalom House, another non-profit organization. In the last few years of his life, T. said his appearance and health had improved significantly.        

In response to Mainer’s inquiries about the Hollis case and the practices of landlords like Rice more generally, Carney is now a Democratic state senator representing Cape Elizabeth. She said she cannot “provide any And represent any particular client.” In addition, Senator Carney added, “I don’t have any current information to be within the scope of more general questions about landlords doing business in Portland. So I’m sorry I can’t help you, I hope you have a good day. Thank you. Goodbye." 

As Senator Carney’s comments revealed, even politicians who have a first-hand understanding of the horror that Rice suffered from his tenants are reluctant to say a word to him. This is why renters of Trelawny Building and other Rice properties are now organizing a counterattack. 

Among the residents leading the New Trelawney Tenant Alliance are former state senator and Portland Mayor Ethan Sterling, who has rented an apartment on the sixth floor of the Trelawney Building since March 2016 , The rent paid (as of 2018) was less than $1,000. Strimling also refused to discuss Rice or more general landlord issues with Mainer, but he did connect us with TTU leader Wes Pelletier. 

In the spring of 2020, as the epidemic raged in Maine, Pelletier, active in the local chapter of the American Democratic Socialists, posted a flyer at the Trelawney Building to encourage residents to join a private Discord online chat channel to discuss them Dissatisfaction and worry. In June last year, Pelletier stated that TTU had collected nearly 50 signatures from Apartment Mart tenants. This letter was written to Rice, questioning his refusal to renew the lease—they suspected this was to circumvent the new city regulations and prevent large rents. rise. Lease renewal. 

Last spring, Rice’s tenants received a letter warning them that they expect rents to increase by 10% on November 1 this year, which violates the city ordinance that requires rents to be maintained from June 2020 to 2022. Filed a complaint with the Portland Housing Security Office and announced in July that the office had ordered Rice to cancel the rent increase. 

TTU is working hard to get Rice to comply with other aspects of Portland's new tenant protection law, such as registering all his units in the city and informing tenants of their rights. As usual, the bureaucrats of the city hall unfortunately let Rice yield.     

For example, last month TTU sent an email to the city’s permit and housing security manager Zachary Lenhert, asking whether Rice complied with the requirements for registering all units, including the June 2020 rent for each apartment. "Collecting this data [sic] citywide is a heavy task for our office," Lenhert replied via an email shared with Mainer. "Our licensing/registration software is not set up [sic] to collect this data. It is difficult for us to match the basic rent submitted by the landlord with the current registration situation." 

In addition, Lenhert admitted, “We don’t know every limited liability company that Mr. Rice is associated with. We need a specific address or other identifying information (such as LLC) to provide that information.” 

TTU also asked Lenhert to explain why his office did not impose financial penalties on Rice for failing to comply with the city's new requirements. "Our office can issue penalties, but we choose not to pursue them at this time," Lenhert replied via email. "We appreciate your attention, but this is within the discretion of our office." 

"It's like pulling a tooth and letting [the city] take the initiative to investigate Rice's other buildings," Pelletier said. However, when city leaders fiddled with the proverbial flames, TTU continued to put pressure directly on Rice. 

Rice met with the group three times early, listened to their complaints, and agreed not to expel anyone while the discussion continued, but refused to meet with the group again afterwards. So last month they sent him another letter. This letter has very long requirements, including cancellation of fines for violating the three-minute window rule, cancellation of the lease to prohibit drinking and marijuana in Trelawney, and payment of construction personnel. Increases, and changes in pet policies-13 items in total.  

The response they receive in an email is usually straightforward, with the title listing another limited liability company (this company is strangely called "TRYLAWNY 657"). Most answers are simple "no". Regarding the window rules, the answer was: "No. Those who are too hot must make a written request to the office." One of the requirements that Rice's team agreed to meet was to laminate and post the city's new renters in all of his buildings. Rights document, but it is not clear whether this has actually been completed.      

Trelawney transitioned from a humble house to a suitable apartment building, followed by a large number of socially conscious tenants who refused to be intimidated by Rice. "There is a strong sense of community in the building," Pelletier said. "It seems to be a group of very young people who work in restaurants on the peninsula." These days, the residents of the other four Rice properties are also active in TTU. 

Pelletier said that TTU hopes to include renters in all buildings in Rice and eventually launch a tenant union movement across the city. "It's not just a fight with your landlord," he said. "It can also let people watch your cat, or let you know if the Internet is down, or if it's just your connection."

Given the real threat that Rice will evict tenants who are shouting or trying to raise rents, getting people to write their names in letters to him is a major achievement. I asked Pelletier, who lives with his wife in Trelawney, whether he was worried that his activism would lead to his own deportation. 

"Oh absolutely," he said. "I saw some people mentioned,'Oh, that letter has your name on it.'" But Pelletier added confidently, "I'm ready to take part in this battle."

As Hollis said, feel it. 

Pay attention to the gap: rumors about "splitting" in local politics 

By Chris Busby and Mort Todd | November 2, 2021

Mainer's New Satirical Political Cartoon Chapter 2

After 29 months in Maine's forest seclusion, Pat Hogan found a home and job in Portland. Then he found a hate group conspiring in his bar

We have the support of advertisers and readers who value independent local news as much as you do. Just pay for a pint of Maine craft beer per month, and you can help us publish more content and provide it to everyone for free.